Criminal Indifference
by D.K. Archer
Summary: Jumba receives bad news from home late one night, and his behavior puts a strain on his current relationships.


Criminal Indifference D.K. Archer

Automated Transmission from: The Necropolis Medrath, Medrath planetoid, Bel system Recipient: DR. JUMBA JOOKIBA Care of: WENDY PLEAKLEY, communicator number 591-11-4574

Time of Transmission: 142 hours, month of Baalst, Red Year Estimated Planet-side time of receipt: March 22nd, 2:15 am

Verification requested

DR. JUMBA JOOKIBA,

The Necropolis at Medrath informs you of the arrival of the remains of:

JEKROB JOOKIBA

At the time of:

13 hours, month of Baalst, Red Year

Remains arrived from:

Keigret's Gas N' Go Diner, Reimat province, Kweltekwaan

The cause of death is reported to be:

Cardiac Arrest

The Necropolis at Medrath sends its most sincere condolences for your loss. You are reported to be the primary contact in the case of the client's death; if this is incorrect, or you wish another member of the clan to be informed, please contact the Necropolis with relevant information within 20 hours of verifying this notice.

The Necropolis at Medrath has a high standard in the funerary arts, including an extensive ritual knowledge encompassing thirteen worlds and nine species. It would be the honor of the Necropolis to host and enact whatever funerary rites are desired for the client (payment to be taken from the estate). If the Necropolis receives no response in this matter, the body of the client will be immolated and sent to nearest waste plant for disposal. The Necropolis will wait 40 hours after verification for your response.

To Verify, please press the Transmit button

To make funeral arrangements, please contact the Office of Client Services, at 311-56-7698

Always beside you in your time of need,  
The Necropolis Medrath

Ever since his mother had discovered the number of his communicator, Pleakley had been forced to keep it hidden in the nightstand at night, muffled by one of Jumba's old shirts. The day schedule on this side of Earth didn't coincide with the schedule on his mother's side of Plorganork, and what was early afternoon for her (a perfectly acceptable time to check up on her little Wendy) was about 4:15 in the morning for Pleakley. To save his own skin from the wrath of a sleep deprived Nani he'd been forced to stifle the ringing, smothering it until it was only audible in the room.

Jumba had learned to sleep through the cursed thing by now. That was why, when the communicator rang a few hours early at a quarter past two, Jumba didn't even bat an eyelid. Pleakley sighed and dragged his eyemask off, yanked the curler from his antenna, and fished the communicator out from the drawer.

"Hi, mama." He yawned, thumbing open the channel. The communicator let go a shrill warning sound and the screen turned white, followed a few moments later by the slow fade in of somber black script. His heart stuttered in a moment of very real panic as he read the heading, his mother on his mind and expecting the worst. He scanned past the recipient name and blinked. 

It wasn't for him.

"Uh, Jumba?" he said meekly.

Jumba grumbled and pulled his blanket up over his head. Pleakley yanked it down again, pulling himself onto the upper bunk.

"Jumba, get up! It's important!"

Slowly, one of Jumba's many eyes rolled open and stared glassily at his bunkmate. He growled.

"This BETTER be important, if you are wanting to be keeping eye." He warned lowly. Jumba had never been much of a morning person.

Pleakley shoved the communicator in his face, blinding him with the sudden onslaught of white light. He covered his face and swatted at it, nearly knocking Pleakley off the bed.

"What are you doing?" Jumba snapped, sitting up and scrubbing at his offended eyes. Red blotches the shapes of view screens danced in front of him.

Pleakley shoved the communicator back towards him. "You've got a message from the Necropolis at Medrath!" 

A message from a Necropolis was never a good thing. Usually, in the time a body was sent to a Necropolis, its data processed, and a notification sent out, news of the passing had already spread through the family and no one was surprised by the letter. But unless something had been sent to Jumba's email, no messages had come through for him within the last three days.

Jumba sighed like a man whose time's being wasted and snatched the communicator, giving the screen a squint-eyed, cursory read. If the name on the field meant anything to him he didn't show it, though Pleakley certainly scrutinized him for a reaction. When he got to the end he thumbed the 'transmit' button absently and the communicator clicked. The screen went dead.

"There. Happy?" He shoved it back into Pleakley's hands. 

Pleakley stared as he rolled over and closed his eyes.

"…well what was it?" He asked, his curiosity getting the better of his common sense.

"It was nothing, just trash."

"That wasn't trash, that was a death notice!" Pleakley yelped. "Momma got one when Grandma Pleakley passed away, so I know the header when I see it! They always send the notice to the closest living relative when a body comes in. It HAD to be somebody you know."

Jumba grumbled to himself in a language Pleakley didn't understand. "It is being nothing." He said finally. "Just a man who is having no close relations. We share a few chromosomes of the Jookiba clan, and that is being ALL we are sharing."

"You promise?" Pleakley asked suspiciously. "You swore you weren't going to keep secrets from me anymore."

Jumba rolled his eyes and shifted onto his back, pushing onto his elbows to bring Pleakley into view over his belly. "Pleakley, I am PROMISING, it is nothing. Be going back to bed now."

Pleakley watched him, his arms crossed, but Jumba's face stayed blank.

"Alright, I'll trust you." he agreed, sounding none too pleased at the idea. "But if you're being a Grumpy Gus tomorrow you HAVE to tell me who the notice was about! There's no reason for you to be keeping this sort of thing inside anymore, now that you've got me around."

"Good NIGHT, Pleakley." Jumba said severely. The tone booked no arguments; shut up and lay down. Pleakley swung back down into his own bunk and frowned up at the sagging support bars of the upper bunk. If his snoring (and lack thereof) were any indication, Jumba still hadn't fallen asleep when Pleakley's mother called, two hours later.

"Pleakley, I'm going to be late for school!" Lilo whined, her backpack already over her shoulder. Pleakley, who was busy burning hotcakes on the skillet, snagged her by the hanging strap.

"Hold your equines there, young lady!" he said. "Nani had to leave early and she entrusted ME to make sure you start the day off right! I'm not letting you out of the house without your breakfast!"

"But today's the day we get to unleash the chemical resistant potato bugs into the hothouse we made! If I'm late I won't get to help with the carnage!"

"Potato carnage can wait." He said. "Sit down and eat your breakfast."

Lilo groaned and climbed onto one of the kitchen chairs, dropping her backpack on the table. Pleakley scraped a few too-dark cakes onto the Corelle ware and dropped it down in front of her. He still hadn't quite gotten the hang of cooking using Earth ingredients, or the shortened cooking time, though he had become a master at carbonizing any and all foods in the kitchen. Burnt hotcakes were the least of the horrors he'd unleashed on the kitchen table; he'd once tried to serve them a well-meant and symbolic dish of his home planet, using local ingredients, and while the finished product turned out looking exactly like it was supposed to (complete with the fish eye garnishes) they could only hope the taste was completely off, because not even Nani had been able to choke it down to spare his feelings.

Lilo grumbled and began stuffing burnt hotcakes in her mouth, not slowing down to help the taste with syrup or jam. By the time Stitch came slumping into the kitchen after her she'd almost cleared her plate.

"You look like something the cart ran over." Pleakley said, pouring more batter into the skillet. Stitch grumbled at him and draped himself on the kitchen table.

"What did he say?"

"He said he didn't get any sleep last night." Lilo translated. "You were up all night talking and he could hear it through the walls."

"Oh, don't I know it!" Pleakley grumbled. "First a necropolis calls and leaves a message for Jumba, and then Momma calls and has to tell me aaaaall about Cousin Pika's wedding to that Burburo man—"

"Necropolis?" Lilo interrupted.

"Oh, it's, erm…" Pleakley frowned. "It's where some planets send people when they die."

"Like an alien heaven?"

"No, more like a morgue." He said. He scrunched up his would-be nose. "Some planets are too populated to have the traditional ceremonies they want when a loved one dies, so the body goes to an off-world colony called a Necropolis, and the ceremony is held there."

"Cool!" she said, then paused. "Wait. Why would an interstellar graveyard want to talk to Jumba? Did he get a phone call from beyond the grave, like in the Twilight Zone?"

Pleakley shook his head. "No, the message came from the Office of Client Services. Somebody in the Jookiba clan died and Jumba is the closest living relation, so he has to make the funeral arrangements."

Lilo's face fell. "Somebody in his family died?" she asked, all too familiar with the concept.

"Now now, it's nothing like that." he said. "Jumba told me it was just some distant relation, he hardly even knows the guy. He's fine. After all, he was feeling well enough to yell at me for keeping him up all night." He snorted.

"Where is Jumba, anyway?" she asked, stuffing the last of her breakfast in her mouth.

"He went out to the ship the third time Momma called back. He said if he couldn't get any sleep he might as well get some work done."

"I hope he's not making another evil genius experiment to unleash on the island." She grumbled.

"It wouldn't surprise me." he said dully. "Weren't you late for school a few minutes ago?"

"Oh!" Lilo grabbed her backpack. "That's right, I gotta get going! Potato bugs!" She scuttled across the kitchen floor, punching the screen door open in front of her. "Goodbye, Stitch! See ya, Pleakley!"

"Goodbye, Lilo! Have fun!"

The door clattered shut behind her. Pleakley looked down at the lumps of too-thick batter in the skillet; they were trying to burn to the bottom. He held the pan out to Stitch. "You want these?"

Stitch slurped his tongue across the hot metal, taking the hotcakes with it. His saliva sizzled and gave off a burning smell like ammonia cleaners.

Pleakley made a face. "Eww. That's just vile, you little monster."

He dropped the pan in the sink with the hiss of heat touching water and went in search of a clean one to finish making breakfast.

When Pleakley made his way out towards the ship with a plate and a clean shirt for the evil genius, Stitch was taking advantage of the finally quiet household to snore for a few hours on the couch. Pleakley supposed he should hold off on tidying up until the little monster was awake; he didn't need Stitch to try to stuff him in the vacuum canister again. He was still feeling a little claustrophobic from last time.

Humming to himself and ignoring the flies that followed the covered plate adoringly, Pleakley headed around back to the 'hidden' space ship, which had been collecting junked machines around the feet for Jumba to either fix or cannibalize. He picked his way through the conglomeration of rusty metal and colorful paint jobs and palmed the hatch's keypad.

Since they'd been relocated to Earth, the small sleeping quarters in the candy-apple ship had been transmuted into a secondary lab, used for things that were too loud, too disruptive, or too morally perverse for Pleakley to tolerate in the house. It was also the only place Jumba could tack up his printouts from the LadyLove intergalactic website, costing three dollars a month of Nani's unknowing money. Pleakley wasn't entirely sure how he felt about the pin ups or the experiments, but so long as he kept the doors shut when Lilo was on board and nobody died from his machinery, he supposed he didn't have any winning argument against either. The illegality of his work was of no concern to Jumba Jookiba, and Pleakley hadn't quite figured out if he was entitled to make Jumba get rid of his pin up collection. The secondary 'lab' and the ship itself were Jumba's retreats from the human world, and Pleakley didn't have any say over what happened in there, not after Jumba went ahead with 627.

"Hello?" he called up, peeping his head up through the hatch. "Jumba, I brought your breakfast! And a clean shirt, I need to wash the one you've got on!"

There was a crash and a loud chain of swearing from the lab. Pleakley climbed the rest of the way inside. "Jumba? Are you okay?" he called warily.

"Yes, I am dropping equipment on feet!" Jumba snapped. "Come in!"

He did not feel particularly inclined to 'come in'. He stopped at the barrier between the legitimate, clean, family friendly ship and the filthy, illegal, unkempt den of science.

"Jumba?"

"What? I said to be bringing it here!"

"Nuh uh! I'm not setting foot in there, not since you started putting those nudie pictures up all over the walls!" Pleakley said stubbornly. "If you want your breakfast, then come out and get it!"

He heard Jumba grumbling and the clatter of tools being juggled together. A few moments later Jumba stuck his head out the door. He was limping slightly.

"What are you building this time, anyway?" Pleakley asked, holding the plate and shirt out to him. Jumba took them.

"Am building mechanical matter-energy converter." He said. "Capable of consuming a small child in under three minutes. Creates more energy than most efficient of fuels!"

"…WHY are you building a matter-energy converter capable of consuming a small child in under three minutes?' Pleakley asked. Jumba had stuffed the entire plate of hotcakes in his mouth at once. He shrugged.

"M'cause id did no' exist 'efore." He mumbled around it.

Pleakley was going to have to take his word on that. "Give me your shirt." He said instead. "You wore that one yesterday and I have to do laundry."

"Eh, it's still clean." Jumba said with a shrug.

"Oh-h-h no." Pleakley took the plate away from him and shook a finger scoldingly. "You're not going to go back to that nasty habit of wearing the same thing all week! That may work in your laboratory back home but it sure won't work here, mister! People have to be around you! Now strip!"

"Strip?" Jumba parroted playfully. "You want I should strip?"

Pleakley's face turned a slightly darker shade of green and he sputtered. "You know what I mean!"

"Yeah, yeah. You are being sounding more and more like ex wife every day." He grumbled, but peeled off the three day old shirt anyway and threw it towards Pleakley. It looked more like a sheet of tent canvas in his hands than a shirt. Pleakley hauled it in like a fishing net while Jumba fumbled with the buttons on its replacement.

"Did you get around to calling the Necropolis back?" Pleakley asked cheerfully, not noticing Jumba rip a button off its threads when he said it. "You only get so long to answer those things, you know. If you don't they'll burn the body and throw it away with the trash!" Pleakley stopped, and frowned. "I wasn't paying much attention when we covered Keltekwaan in college; it was always right before ball practice. But the House of Jookiba is from the Reimat Province, isn't it? Or was it Kerbat?"

"Reimat." Jumba said gruffly.

"Right! The Reimat province has some REALLY intricate funerary rites (we spent a week on Keltekwaan rites). The Reimat culture's one of those that doesn't let people into the afterlife without the proper rituals, isn't it?"

"So I am aware." Jumba said icily.

"Then what are you waiting for? Call the Necropolis back and make the arrangements! You don't want him to spend the rest of eternity in limbo, do you?" The look Jumba laid him with could have frozen nitrogen.

"Are you wanting anything other than to be nagging me? Or am I to be going back to work now?"

Pleakley blinked. "I don't nag. I remind! You know how you get when you're working; you don't even remember to eat regularly! You don't want to mess up somebody's afterlife because you forgot to return a call, do you?"

"It is none of your business if I am messing up afterlife!" Jumba snapped.

The fact Pleakley just stared at him was more than a little irritating. 

"Wow. You're certainly a Mr. Grouchy Face this morning." Pleakley said. "What's the matter?"

"You are irritating me. THAT is the matter." Jumba growled.

Pleakley rested the shirt and plate on his non-existent hip. "Now now, you promised me last night that if you were a crab in the morning you would tell me what was bothering you. So come on, out with it. What's this all about?"

"The only thing this is about," Jumba said slowly "Is that I am being very tired from being kept up all night by you yammering away with your mother. And now, now you are bothering me while I am working! How am I supposed to be acting?"

"All I did was bring you your breakfast!" Pleakley defended.

"And nag! I hate nagging! Ex wife was QUEEN of nagging; why you think I stopped talking to her?"

"I didn't nag!" Pleakley snapped. "All I did was ask you if you'd answered the letter! You're the one who went all off on me!"

Jumba snorted.

"Well you were!" Pleakley said. "You're being a big meanie this morning, even for you. And unless you're doing something evil again like when you built 627 and BEAT ME UP, I have to believe something's bothering you! ARE you doing something evil again? Say planning to actually try out you matter-energy converter on poor little Lilo?"

Jumba's mouth dropped open. "I would NEVER put Little Girl in matter-energy converter! Is for theory only!"

"Well then something's bothering you! And it HAS to be that letter; nothing else has happened!"

"Bah!" Jumba waved him off and turned to go back into his lab. "You have been spending too much time around the cleaning products, they've burned your tiny little brain! I told you it was nothing important. I am merely tired! End of discussion!"

"No it is NOT the end of the discussion!" Pleakley dropped his burden and bolted between him and the door, bracing his arms in the frame and blocking it. "You're not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on." He said firmly.

Staring down at him, entirely unamused, the enormous size disparity between the two was painfully obvious. Jumba could probably destroy his cartilage frame and all his organs with it without even breaking a sweat.

Instead Jumba just put an arm out and shoved him backwards into the lab. Pleakley tripped on his own three feet and landed on his rump near the sleeping cot, which had been used only occasionally and never remade. The lab was dark save a handful of work lights aimed into a tangle of circuits, plastic, and steel on top of the makeshift lab table. In the refracted light Pleakley could see the dozens of print outs of Kweltekwaanian women taped to the walls and ceiling. Not being entirely familiar with Kweltekwaanian anatomy, Pleakley wasn't positive what they were doing, but he had a pretty fair idea.

Jumba pushed the door shut behind him, and for a moment it was quiet in the strange twilight of the lab. 

"Jumba?" Pleakley asked hesitantly. He was the one trapped now, and it wasn't a good feeling.

Jumba calmly paced over to the work bench and sat down on his stool, his back to Pleakley. He picked up one of the many unidentifiable drivers and wriggled it down into the mess of parts, the small room filled with the skritching sound of metal on metal.

"Why are you making such a fuss about this?" Jumba asked eventually, softly.

Pleakley pulled himself up and sat on the edge of the cot. "You mean the letter? Because it's got you upset."

"So? If I am being upset, only wait a few days until I am not upset. Then you can nag me until your heart is content and I will not so much as blink."

"But I don't want to nag you." he said, surprised. "I just want you to tell me what's going on."

"WHY are you so desperate to know?" Jumba sounded exasperated.

Pleakley hesitated, and stumbled on the words, humiliated and hot-faced. "…B…because I love you…And I want to help."

Jumba paused. In the few months since their 'relationship' had come around Pleakley had said those words dozens of times, and never once had Jumba said them back. There were some things he just couldn't force himself to utter, not after his ex wife.

The lab smothered in a long, dead silence, until Jumba clumsily raised his driver again and resumed tinkering. Pleakley cleared his throat.

"Jumba…who WAS the notice about?"

Jumba didn't answer for a long, uncomfortable moment, filled with metal scratching. 

"Jekrob." He said finally. "Jekrob Jookiba, eighth son of the family of Riese."

"…Did you know him very well?"

Jumba stabbed something with the driver. "He was my father…Of course I did not know him."

Pleakley's jaw dropped. "Your father! Oh, Jumba—"

"It is not like that!" he snapped over his shoulder. "You assume the worst. We have not been speaking for twenty eight years; we have been dead to each other long before now."

Pleakley blinked. "Twenty eight years? What could he possibly do to warrant not speaking to your father for twenty eight years?"

The machine squeaked as the driver went through a plastic shell; he was mauling at it more than anything. "When I was fifteen…" he started, but his voice tripped. He coughed and tried again. 

"When I was fifteen I received scholarship for the Tri-System College near Keltekwaan. VERY prestigious university, there were competition from four different species, but my scores were good enough to let me there three years early. My mother and my father were to be spending all their money on my education. 'So you can bring merit to the Jookiba clan', they said."

He prodded the machine; some moving part lashed up at him feebly with a dull mechanical whir. 

"I bring merit, all right. I go away to study and I stop talking to them, for YEARS I stop talking to them, even after graduation, saying I was too busy. They were believing me; I was in lab in basement of some university, letting out fragments of my research to keep government funding. I was considered brightest mind from Keltekwaan, and they did not even know the extent of my genius! Ha!" He stabbed the machine again. "My father called me when my mother was becoming sick. She suffered slow degeneration of nervous system; something any first year geneticist knew would happen. Her mother brought it through on the female chromosomes of her family."

Jumba stared at the wall thoughtfully for a moment.

"Surgeons could only do so much, even if they could have afforded it, after having spent all the money on me." He said. "But I could do better. I could grow new spinal column and degenerate nodes, ones which would not decay, and imprint them with her so she would not so much as need to recreate the pathways. With help of lab crew it would have been three day affair. She could live out rest of lifespan in perfect health."

Pleakley stared at him through the sudden silence. "So what happened? Did the procedure fail?"

Jumba chuckled darkly. "I did not do procedure." He said. "I was still angry with them for all the stupid transgressions of child rearing. I told them I was too busy and accepted no further calls, until head of Jookiba clan sent me a notification of her death, and notice of my severance from the bloodline of the family of Riese."

Pleakley seemed to have no reply to that, and Jumba laughed at the quiet behind him. "You are wishing you did not ask me about this now, no? It is no good to know man you think you are loving being guilty of matricide."

Pleakley hesitated. "You didn't –kill- her." He said carefully, though he couldn't imagine ever doing what Jumba had; he could never withhold anything so vital from his mother. Jumba was startled to hear he had moved from the cot; the voice now came from directly behind him. 

"And you didn't kill him, either." Pleakley added.

"Bah, I know that." he said. "It has been too long for anything I have done to have caused his death. He died of a heart attack at gas n' go diner on interstate. Clan can blame deep fried porgas strips for this one."

Two snaky, boneless arms creeped around his neck from behind; when he was sitting, Pleakley was nearly tall enough to hug him, though his reach wasn't hardly enough. Jumba craned his head around to stare down at the weight against his back, baffled.

"I tell you I am guilty of worst crime possible, and you are hugging me?" he asked, incredulous. "Are you not understanding here?"

"I understand." He said, his voice a little muffled by Jumba's shirt. "You already lost your mother and your whole family because of it, and now your father died far off on the other side of the galaxy, without ever getting to make amends."

Jumba stared. After a long moment he turned his gaze back to the work bench.

"Would you be forgiving so easily, if your brother had killed your mother?" Jumba asked lightly.

The arms around his neck tightened. "Don't say things like that." Pleakley ordered.

"Ah, see? Is not so easy to forgive, if it were your family." he frowned. "There is no way to be making amends for killing your father's wife. I am marked as a man of no family in the Jookiba clan records. There is no way to be going back from that."

Time lurched for a moment, and Jumba suddenly growled and slammed the driver down, shaking the work bench and scaring Pleakley's heart to pounding. "We have been dead to each other for VERY long time!" Jumba snapped. "I put my clan behind me long ago! There is NO reason for me to care now that he is dead! NONE!"

The silence made an effective argument. Jumba put his forehead in his hands and swallowed against the rising knot in his gut. "No reason to care –now-..."

His voice had sounded weak, and Pleakley (feeling shamefully relieved that he was finally in familiar territory) circled around to Jumba's side and tried to pull him close, like his mother had done when he'd been little and his pet chicheni died. 

"It'll be okay, Jumba" He cooed, drippingly sympathetic, and a better imitation of his mother than he would ever care to think. "Now you just cry out all your troubles and Pleakley'll—"

"GETTING OFF OF ME!" Jumba snapped, shoving Pleakley a little too hard "YOU are fool who cries, not me!" He snarled, straightening himself up to take full psychological advantage of his size. "Jumba Jookiba does not cry, ESPECIALLY over HIM!"

Pleakley put his chin up, defensive. "There's nothing wrong with showing your emotions!"

"Says man in dress." Jumba said flatly.

"It's a disguise!"

Jumba snorted. "Disguise excuse lost credibility LONG ago. Now, you are simply one eyed fluff wearing women's clothing because you are not having qualifications to be wearing men's."

Pleakley's jaw dropped, aghast. "Jumba! That's cruel and unfair and you know it!" he scolded.

"Cruel and unfair?" Jumba snorted. "HA! Do you know what is cruel and unfair? Exiling greatest mind in Galactic Federation, exiling lead scientist of Galactic Defense, HERE, on BACKWARDS little dirt ball that is CRAWLING with primates! Ha, but not only that! I must being exiled with this…" He grimaced at the word. "…-family-. FAKE family, with Little Girl and Larger Girl and my own experiment, not to mention PATHETIC little green culture expert who is thinking I could EVER be lonely enough to care about him, to come CRAWLING to him, because 'that's what family is for'." He sneered.

Pleakley's face was chalky, and Jumba curled his lip at him.

"Were you to be thinking I would tell you everything?" he said mockingly. "That I were to be breaking down like child and you could be making it all better with a pat on the head and a heartfelt reminder of your…'love'." Jumba sat back down at his workbench, apparently through with the situation. "…Pathetic." He grumbled.

Behind him, it was silent for nearly a minute. Jumba almost turned around, but stubbornness won out over concern; he couldn't risk being brought to regret.

"W..Well I'm SORRY!" Pleakley snapped finally, his voice wavery. "I should never have made the mistake of wanting to HELP, just because I thought you were hurt!"

"No." Jumba said flatly.

"I shouldn't have assumed you HAD any feelings to hurt in the first place!"

"Exactly."

"It was all my mistake!"

"Precisely!"

Pleakley fumed. "It's a mistake I'll be sure not to make again! See if I care the next time somebody in your family dies!"

"Please, to be feeling free." Jumba deadpanned. Behind him, the brief war between anger and tears was decided, and Pleakley stormed out of the spaceship, trying and failing to slam the electric lab door behind him.

"…of all the STUPID…inSUFFERERABLE…" 

Ranting, Pleakley kicked the screen door open, the plate and Jumba's wadded shirt carried before him like a pregnancy. He dropped the plate in the kitchen sink thoughtlessly as he passed, cracking it, and not caring.

The laundry basket was in the living room waiting to be taken to wash. Pleakley threw the shirt into it and spun on an unsuspecting Stitch, who was still trying to take a nap, a throw pillow jammed down over his face.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT MAN!" Pleakley shouted at him. Stitch growled and pressed the pillow down harder.

"Naga."

"That he has the NERVE to-to SAY that, when I was just trying to help!"

"NAGA!" Stitch repeated, and flipped over onto his stomach, crushing his ears under the pillow. Pleakley put his fists on his hips.

"What's YOUR problem?"

Stitch growled again, but lifted the pillow up far enough to imitate the sharp ringing tone that woke him up at night.

Pleakley was flustered out of his fury. "My communicator?"

Irritated, Stitch repeated the ringing noise more forcefully.

"Oh! You mean my phone's going off!"

"Ih!"

"Well why didn't you say something when I came in!" Pleakley snapped, but he was already running for the stairs.

When he pulled the noisy machine up from the nightstand he was met with the impatient, painfully bored face of a heavy set Kweltekwaanian woman, as opposed to the telemarketer he was expecting to hang up on (or the mother he could sincerely use). She looked fairly old, however many years constituted 'old' in that species, and leaned on her desk with one hand on her cheek, pushing the wrinkles of her face into diagonal grids. The communicator must have been ringing for some time; she wasn't even paying enough attention to notice it had been answered.

"Hello?"

The old woman blinked and stared at the screen in amazement.

"About time." She said.

"What do you want?"

She smiled with professional calmness at his hostility, creating a new pattern of wrinkles on her skin. "I was told Jumba Jookiba can be reached at this number. This is the only communicator registered on planet."

Pleakley grumbled something to himself low under his voice. "HE isn't here. But he's got an illegal, unregistered connection in his ship, if you want to try it."

She smirked. "Illegal and unregistered sounds about right. Put me through."

He punched in the number to the ship's communications relay and the screen went blank. He tossed the communicator back in the nightstand and sniffed. "I hope she's calling with another arrest warrant." he sulked.

The ship chiming off an incoming message startled Jumba into stabbing the driver into his thumb instead of the joint he was reattaching. He was still swearing at the sore when he punched open the communications channel in the cockpit, dropping himself into the captain's chair.

"…goodness, did you gain weight?" The screen asked him bluntly.

Jumba glared and bit his offended digit. "What are YOU wanting?" he growled.

The old woman smiled. "Good to see you again too, Jumba."

"I am NEVER pleased to be seeing Jookiba clan overseer." He muttered.

"Trust me, it isn't a waltz through the flowers from my end, either."

Jumba scowled. "Are you to be calling for a reason or are you just wanting the pleasure of my company?"

She snorted at that. "Not even I'm that desperate. Did you get a letter from the Necropolis Medrath in the last day or so?"

"This would be being your business how?"

"Don't play dumb, Jumba." She warned. "We need that body. That damned Necropolis got ahold of your father before anyone thought to tell the clan authorities he was dead. The Office of Client Services won't release him into our custody without your consent; your status as his biological offspring overrides clan rights in Necropolis."

He stared at her dully. "The disposal of Jekrob's remains is my concern. Not yours."

"Jumba, your criminal indifference to your family's welfare is a well known fact." She said bluntly. "Your father was the last living member of the Riese line, since you so callously turned your back on it, and the clan doesn't want to see him immolated without ritual. You know as well as I do what that means to his soul."

"Bah." Jumba snorted.

She sniffed at him. "I would think you would have no problem with allowing us to release his non-existent soul into the Fields, seeing as the self-proclaimed evil genius doesn't believe in them."

He scowled. "You are not to be wasting any more time on him. I will contact Necropolis, if and when I am deeming it necessary."

"Jumba, I can't allow you to condemn him!"

"I condemn nothing." He said icily. "And I am having no regard for what you are and are not allowing. Goodbye, Overseer."

"Jumba!"

He closed the channel on her.

Nani didn't get off work until six forty five; fifteen minutes short of getting overtime, which she desperately needed this week. The government stipend Cobra Bubbles had managed in light of the extraterrestrials living under her roof only paid part of the essentials, enough to cover most of what Jumba ate and some of what Pleakley impulse-bought off the television. The rest of the bills were entirely up to her, and being the sole wage earner for a family that size was a lot of responsibility, especially for someone her age with her work background.

The house was still intact when she came up the driveway; that was always a good sign. There were also no alarms blaring or alien experiments clinging to the roof; another very good sign, whenever Lilo was involved. If she was lucky, that might mean today was going to be entirely devoid of alien catastrophe.

If only she could EVER be so lucky.

Nani pocketed the keys to the jeep and called out when she came in the kitchen door. There were half eaten cartons of Chinese food on the table and the voices of one of Pleakley's Law and Order shows drifting in from the living room. He must have already sent Lilo upstairs, then, to have something like that on the tv.

"Pleakley?" she asked, putting her head into the living room. Stitch and Lilo were sitting on the floor in front of the couch, glue, glitter, and magic markers sprawled out in a halo around them. Lilo was putting red sparkles in the eyes of the giant rampaging potato bug she'd drawn on her construction paper report cover. Stitch was licking the glitter off the floor as she spilled it.

"Hi Nani!" Lilo said cheerfully. "Look! We did potato bug carnage in class!" She held up the report cover, which was dripping a little and looked like a Japanese monster movie meets 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.' 

"Is that all your homework?" Nani asked.

"Yup!" Lilo chirped. "And I even asked Stitch to check the spelling!"

Nani grimaced. "Maybe you'd better let me look at it before you go to bed, alright?"

Stitch, who had been largely ignoring the both of them while he sucked the bottle of glue, growled at the television, and Lilo turned to look.

"It's that pedophile who killed the Cuban boy!" she shouted, pointing at a short white actor with glasses. "Get him, Finn! Beat him up!"

"Pedophile!" Nani yelped. She snatched the remote off the sofa and turned the television off. 

"Hey!"

"Lilo, what are you doing watching a show like that! You aren't supposed to know what a pedophile is!" she scolded. "Where's Jumba and Pleakley, why isn't one of them keeping an eye on you!"

"Jumba's out in the ship." Lilo said, frowning at the dead television. Stitch was busy calculating the distance between himself and the remote, trying to decide if he would be faster than Nani. "Pleakley's upstairs crying again. I think him and Jumba are fighting."

"Ugh. Not again." Nani muttered. When Pleakley and Jumba fought, it was a good idea not to get involved. Nani didn't have the benefit of a flexible skeleton like Pleakley did, and while she didn't think Jumba would actually strike her, he sometimes got that look in his eyes like he wanted to. She didn't trust that look, and she didn't trust Jumba's self control.

"Look Lilo, I'm going to get something to eat." She said, turning from them. "You'd better be watching something decent when I come back into the living room."

Stitch snatched the remote and turned the power back on. Two characters Nani recognized as detectives were bickering with each other over a stack of bloody photographs.

"Stitch…" she warned.

He sighed and changed the channel.

"Now we'll never find out if they caught him." Lilo grumbled.

It's easy to lose track of time in a closed ship. That irritating organ Jumba called his stomach had played along with his warping senses until a good deal past midnight, when it decided it didn't care of his mind was oriented to Kweltekwaanian time, it was still oriented to Earth's. He'd been stubbornly ignoring its grumblings since that morning, when Pleakley had brought him breakfast and he'd insulted him as best he could for the favor. Making Pleakley angry had made him feel a little better, for a moment. But only for that moment. Once the Plorginarian was gone Jumba felt worse than he had already, and tore the converter to pieces.

He supposed he was glad the Overseer didn't call him until after he'd done his damage; stabbing himself in the thumb when his concentration broke was better than destroying the ship's communications (again). That woman always had been possessed of a sense of timing. It was one of the things that made her so incredibly irritating.

Jumba carefully set down the circuit board he'd been assembling and took stock of his progress. The converter, for whatever good it would do anyone, was sprawled and skeletal on top of the work bench, a wide hole left open in the middle for the containment pod he'd yet to build. When he'd begun he'd planned on sizing the thing to fit a human child, since they were the only species of abundance, but after the Overseer called he had resized it to fit a Keltekwaanian's. When it was done, any child young enough to fit could be easily and economically converted into usable battery power, capable of running ships, lab equipment, and recharging cellphones. 

It was probably the most useful thing a child could do with his life, anyway.

Stretching the cricks out of his back, Jumba glanced at the ship's clock. It was a little past three, in the morning, if the dull beginnings of his dehydration headache were any indication. The household would be asleep by now, and he had about an hour before Pleakley's mother called and woke half of them. He hauled himself to his feet and grimaced at the weight of himself pulling down on his bones. Sometimes, it almost seemed worth the effort to loose the extra weight, but he'd be damned before he said it out loud. The last thing he needed was Pleakley fussing over his diet again (eliminate his chocolate consumption, indeed!)

Jumba tried to shake the feeling back into his legs as he stumbled down the access ramp of the ship. The stairs of the house's back porch creaked under his weight as he snuck in through the kitchen door with as much stealth as could be expected from a half ton evil-genius. Floor beams groaned and the red eye of the coffeemaker stared up at him as he bumbled about for the refrigerator, his eyes slow to adjust to the dark. A dim and silent light flickered softly through the door to the living room, but Jumba didn't recall the implications of this until he was bent over in the refrigerator door, shuffling through remnants of pork rice and sweet and sour chicken, and an all-too-familiar voice came at him like icicles from the doorway.

"Did you finish the converter?"

Jumba startled and fumbled a box of rice, the contents too solidified to break free when it landed. Pleakley was leaned against the doorframe, the silent television stuttering behind him and the sharp refrigerator light turning him the washed tones of an old photograph. Jumba pushed the door to the refrigerator shut, dropping both of them into blind darkness.

"Shouldn't you being waiting in bed for your mother?" Jumba asked, matching Pleakley's chill.

"She won't call for another hour." He said.

The silhouette disappeared from the doorway and Jumba automatically moved back, giving the unknown a wide berth. The kitchen flooded with bleached refrigerator light again and he saw Pleakley in the mouth of it, pulling the cartons out into his arms. Plates scraped as Pleakley pulled Corelle ware from the cabinet, and the door closed on the light again. He groped in the dark for the light switch behind the sink and harsh fluorescence sputtered to life; all horrible, grating lights in this room. At the counter, Pleakley scraped the eclectic contents of the cartons onto the plate and held it out to Jumba, a cold offering of clumped rice and congealed sauces.

"You missed dinner." He said flatly.

The seasoned globules of dead pig and boiled rice looked grey and unpalatable. Jumba took the plate and looked at it dully for a moment.

"I didn't feel like cooking." Pleakley said, unable to abide the uneasy silence Jumba was projecting. "If you'd have come in at supper time instead of sulking out there in your ship you could have had something when it was hot, but that's all there is now and I'm not going to make anything else!"

Jumba set the plate on the counter, the angle casting matte white faces and sharp shadows on the cheap wood surface. Pleakley narrowed his eye.

"Pleakley…." Jumba sighed and scrubbed a hand over his head. Though he was loathe to admit it, perhaps he had gone a little too far this morning.

"I am being…very tired, my little one eyed one." He said faintly, which was not quite an apology, but only an unhappy excuse. "It has been long day. Long, terrible day."

"I know it has." Pleakley said. Silence flooded the kitchen, and outside, night bugs were calling to each other. It was Jumba's turn to be uncomfortable.

Eventually Pleakley sighed and looked at the floor. "I don't like this, Jumba." He admitted, softly.

Jumba looked away.

"I try to get close to you and you push me away. I try to HELP you and you ATTACK ME! What am I supposed to do, Jumba?" Pleakley pleaded, sounding sad. "Give me another option. –Please-…"

Jumba stared at him, surprised. Insults and violence he could understand, indifference and mind games were easy. But blatant honesty was more than he knew. His mouth, receiving no instructions from his brain, replied automatically.

"You are watching too many soap operas." He said. "Is making for terrible drama."

Pleakley's face took a blank, unreadable expression, but his skin began to pale under his eye. Jumba fidgeted in a long moment's silence before Pleakley cleared his throat and averted his gaze to the floor.

"I guess that's what you want, then." Pleakley said, more to hear it himself that to tell Jumba, it seemed.

Jumba had no answer.

After a long moment, Pleakley nodded. "Alright." He said softly.

Pleakley turned graciously and disappeared into the dark living room, as simple and unceremonious as that. The television clicked off, leaving Jumba alone in the kitchen with the winking bright linoleum and the battering fluorescent light. His first impulse was to take the food and disappear back into the ship, avoiding further confrontation. Usually, if given time to cool off, Pleakley got over their tiffs with only a little bit of give demanded on Jumba's part, and minimal damage was done. 

Unfortunately, he couldn't quite delude himself into thinking this was 'one of their tiffs.' Something had sounded very…permanent.

Jumba went to the door and stared blindly into the greater darkness of the living room.

"…Pleakley?"

There was no answer. Jumba turned the light on and squinted at the empty room. Pleakley must have headed right for the stairs. Not bothering to turn it off again, Jumba lumbered up towards the second floor, feeling irritable, tired, and heavy.

The bedroom door was shut. Awkwardly, he decided to knock.

"Pleakley?"

"You're sleeping in the ship." Was the flat response he got from the other side of the door. "You can come get your things in the morning."

Jumba blinked. He'd been planning before to sleep in the ship, but of his own free will, not by force. He pushed the door open, throwing a wide bar of light into the room and making Pleakley flinch at the sudden onslaught. The Plorginarian was sitting on his bed, fully clothed, his legs pulled up beneath him in the strange spiral shape that was crosslegged, when you had three of them. 

He was glaring. But his eye looked red.

"I TOLD you. You're sleeping on the ship." Pleakley repeated. Jumba stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

"I am not."

"You aren't getting a choice!" Pleakley flared indignantly. "If you don't want to be part of this family you don't get to live under our roof! Go on and sleep in your lab with pin up posters and illegal genetic experiments! Go on! See if I care!"

"Pleakley—"

"GET OUT!"

Pleakley threw his pillow at him and Jumba caught it, thoughtlessly, his oversized hands crumpling it to a bow. Pleakley was offering him an opportunity for extraction, to slip away from this unnatural family and this doomed relationship and everything he'd ever hated about Earth. He could exile himself even more thoroughly, and devote his life once more to science. All he had to do was be quiet. All he had to do was—

"Sometimes…" he said quickly, voice forced. "Sometimes, when I am sleeping in this room, and I wake up into darkness….I am not being on tiny backwards planet in exile. Sometimes, I open my eyes and I am being in room on Keltekwaan. And I am never gone away to school, I am never inventing or experimenting…I am never…KNOWING…anything… I am stupid child in stupid family with no idea of the universe."

Pleakley didn't move. Jumba's stomach flipped over. 

It wasn't enough.

"When I wake up, they are in next room." He continued desperately, though his throat was trying to force him back to silence. "They are sleeping long night away, together in the dark. And come morning they are to being waking up, opening the windows, dragging me out to help with chores. Sometimes I am really there." He said, softly. "And then I am hearing car, or clock, or your breathing…and I am here. A galaxy away. Alone, on planet which is not my planet, family which is not my family."

Pleakley kept still, though Jumba watched nervously for a reaction. Eventually the scientist slumped back against the door, feeling every bit as tired as he had rights to be, struggling to digest unwieldy chunks of pride in the silence.

"….I was not meaning what I said this morning." Jumba told him hopelessly.

After a moment Pleakley nodded, slowly. 

"I know."

Faced again with a dead silence, Pleakley looked over Jumba appraisingly. His eyes were beginning to darken underneath, and his clothes looked rumpled from so long bent over the work bench. He looked, for once in his life, less than the evil genius he affronted with. He only looked very, very tired.

"…You really loved him, didn't you." Pleakley asked softly, after the silence had spoken. Jumba closed his eyes.

"No. I did not."

For a moment he thought Pleakley was going to challenge it. Instead, when he looked up, he simply sat quietly, arms still crossed over his chest and eye narrowed, thinking.

Some things…Jumba just couldn't say.

It was a long time before Pleakley moved, too long, it felt. He raised one arm in an obvious "come here" gesture (not questioning but ordering), and Jumba's pride recoiled, pushing him back that extra inch into the door, but there wasn't anywhere to run to. Jumba's options had been limited. He could either go to him, kneel on that floor like the worst of beggars and let Pleakley put his arms around him, let Pleakley hold his as though arms that small could possibly do so, or he could turn and open the door, and simply walk away. The spaceship was out there waiting for him, all gleaming metallics and cold walls that hummed with electric life. The space ship could swallow him like a steel womb and blind him to the rest of the world, making his life nothing more than those smooth round walls and circuit boards and glossy color printouts of Kweltekwaanian women with come-hither smiles plastered over his room.

Pleakley gave him one steady look, waiting for his decision.

Jumba's face cracked. 

He went to him.

Lilo had been up thirty minutes late last night re-writing her report, not so much because of content errors but because Stitch's spell-check abilities were not up to par with the rest of the class. Nani had gone through it and marked words that didn't exist with an inkpen, and Lilo had argued that they did too exist, but Nani was firm that Keltekwaanian was not a language acceptable for a grade school report. College, maybe. Not grade school. So Lilo had rewritten the whole thing on the coffee table and stapled the new version into the report cover, figuring Nani couldn't make her re-write it again if it was already set to go.

In determination she not forget it, the report had followed Lilo down from her bedroom and was sitting propped against the cereal box on the kitchen table, the rampaging Priscilla-meets-Godzilla potato bug sparkling in the morning sun. Stitch, ignoring Pleakley's protests that they ought to be cooked first, was popping eggs into his mouth from the carton and leaking yolk between his teeth, spattering yellow onto his chest ruff. Lilo was less ambitious about her breakfast; she just put too much sugar on her cornflakes when Pleakley wasn't looking and stared down the potato bug, wondering if she hadn't ought to pop a few more sequins on its head.

Nani didn't come down until late. She looked tired still.

"Um. Coffee?" she asked in lieu of a greeting. Pleakley thrust the pot at her. "Good morning to you, too." He said.

Nani rubbed her forehead. "Sorry. I didn't get much sleep last night." She explained with a grumble, and Stitch snickered at her. "Morning, Lilo." She added.

"You certainly looked tired enough when you went to bed ." Pleakley said, slipping behind her while she poured to hand her the milk out of the refrigerator. She accepted it gratefully and added it to the cup. "What happened?"

She snorted. "-Someone's- voice carries very well." She said pointedly, glancing back towards the stairs. "It's like having a drum beating in the next room. He was talking all night, I couldn't get any sleep!" she grumbled, stirring up the coffee. "Hey, how come Stitch isn't the walking dead this morning again? He hears better than I do."

Stitch grinned at her, showing rows of yellowing teeth. Lilo just smirked. "That's 'cause Stitch grew up with him!" she said. Nani rolled her eyes.

"So I take it you two aren't fighting anymore?" She asked Pleakley, raising an eyebrow at him while she took her first hot sip of coffee.

Pleakley's face colored just a little. "No, we're not. Jumba had a few phone calls to make that just couldn't wait until morning." It had also meant his mother hadn't gotten anything but a busy signal when she tried to call him last night. He was sure he'd hear about it.

"Ugh. Parole officer?" Nani asked, rubbing her forehead. Pleakley blinked at her.

"What?"

"Did he have to call his parole officer?" she repeated. Who else did he talk to, after all?

Pleakley shook his head, smiling vaguely. "No. It was just family stuff."

Nani grunted and took another swig of her coffee. Family stuff.

The Jookiba Clan Overseer's computer rang an incoming call at 168 hours into the month of Baalst, and she went to it swearing, trying to tie up the front of her bathrobe while the bath ran on without her. She sat down at the console and wiped a hand over her head, composing herself. If this wasn't an emergency the caller was damned well getting disowned; nobody interrupted a bubble bath while the Riemat Symphony was on the radio. Nobody who wanted to live, anyway.

"What is it?" she asked sharply, thumbing the channel open. A bald, overweight man with bags under his eyes came on the screen and she frowned at him. It was Jumba Jookiba. She'd recognize that shiny head anywhere.

He scratched the back of his neck tiredly. "I am having news." He said. The Overseer turned one ear towards the other room, where the radio was still playing obliviously.

"Yes?" she asked, impatient.

Jumba cleared his throat. "I have contacted the Necropolis at Medrath." He said gruffly.

"…and?" she prompted. Why should she care again?

"And…I've made the arrangements." He sighed. The Overseer's eyebrows raised and she turned her attention back to the screen.

"Have you now?"

"…Yes." He said. "And I have turned over control of proceedings to the Clan Jookiba. You should be receiving a letter from Necropolis in a few hours."

The Overseer stared. "..What?"

"You heard me." he said gruffly.

She tilted her head. "Hearing and believing are two different things. What prompted this sudden change of heart? I assumed you'd stick by your guns until the body was immolated. After all, you didn't give much of a damn when your mother was sent off to the fields." She frowned.

Jumba's face closed off the rest of the way, his eyes invisible beneath his brow. "It is being none of your business." He grumbled. "Will you take over the ceremony or wont you?"

"Of course we will!" she injected. "Will the Galactic Council give you permission to attend?" He was, after all, exiled.

Jumba's brow twitched. "No." he snapped. "And I don't care to."

He had asked, apparently.

The Overseer put a finger over her lips in a thoughtful gesture and after a moment, smiled behind it.

"Why Jumba Jookiba, I do believe you have a conscience after all." She smirked.

Jumba growled at her. Her smile softened.

"Thank you." she said, honestly. "I would not want anyone to pass into death without ceremony. Perhaps, when you go, you will be taken back to Kweltekwaan?'

He just glared. The Overseer put up her hands in surrender. "Just thought I'd try."

He stared at her silently for a long moment, then turned his face away, talking gruffly to an unseen wall. "Take two offerings to the temple when you go." He muttered roughly. "One for him. One for…for my mother."

The Overseer's smile disappeared into a soft look. "I will." She told him.

Jumba grunted. The communications channel went black.

Far away, back on Earth, Jumba set down the communicator and let out a long breath of air. He could hear noises coming from the downstairs, muffled sounds of pots clattering and Lilo laughing at something over the mess. Jumba listened for a long moment. Then he stood up, composed his face, and took himself downstairs to breakfast. 


End file.
